


Come Unto These Yellow Sands : T - 14

by StudioRat



Series: Branches and Fate [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Alternate Universe - Children, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Canon Related, Epic Friendship, Gen, Gothic, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Nonlinear Time, Psychological Horror, grimdark friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-21
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-05-22 07:46:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 15,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6071038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StudioRat/pseuds/StudioRat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thou must never suffer that man, with his evil heart, to enter the Sacred Realm of legend...</p><p>Friends are a good thing to have.</p><p>Your friends - what kind of people are they? I wonder. Do those people think of you as a friend?</p><p>Wherever there is a meeting, a parting is sure to follow. But that parting need not last forever.</p><p>-</p><p>Setting:<br/>After and sideways of Majora. Link found a shard of a timeshift stone, and with that and the Ocarina and a lot of For Science!, has done Time Stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the Smol.

A young roc muttered to his sleeping mate, keeping one red eye on the little groundling walking below. It sang - badly, in the roc’s opinion - and did incomprehensible things with a weirdly shaped stick as it climbed toward the box canyon to the northeast. It didn’t look toward the rocs’ nest, or raise shining pain-sticks into the air, but groundlings were never to be trusted.

The wind wasn’t good - thin with twilight, and going the wrong way to drive it safely out of his territory. Anyways the groundling moved oddly, for it had emerged from the shadows below his nest without any warning at all, cawing rudely. The roc watched until the groundling vanished around a distant boulder. His least favorite clutchmate nested on that side - let him deal with it.

The roc grumbled, shifting on his branch and looking forward to his own turn to sleep.

**\- o - O - o -**

 

Rajo danced their spindle along, giddy with the freedom of twilight. This far from the fortress, no guard could see them, and no Rova knew to look. Even with Nabooru on duty tonight, if she did check their room, she wouldn’t tell. Nabs always understood.

The wind pulled at their rust and ochre mantle, sharp and cold though the winter was young yet. It was worth it though - the stars were so much closer here, at the edge of the northern mountains and the rich eastern plains. And tonight, the wind had chased away the gray murk from the east, and the wandering fire would dance

Still, they felt better when they turned the corner and entered the shelter of the first canyon in the Lady’s Quiver. The target poles looked weird and desolate in the lowering sunset, but they weren’t as bad as the straw-men in the third canyon. Those were terrible even in daylight - but at night, they moved all by themselves.

Rajo dropped their spindle when they stumbled over a broken bow half-buried in the sand. The yarn tangled around the jagged wood, and every time Rajo bent to fetch the spindle it rolled away again.

“Tits,” grumbled Rajo, kicking dust at the whole mess, but it only lay there in the wasting light, innocent as anything. Why did Nabs’ words only ever work for her? Maybe they weren’t saying them right. They gathered wind and shouted at the canyon, vaguely pleased when the canyon shouted back. But the spindle raced away as soon as they touched the yarn again.

Stupid warriors, leaving trash where anybody might trip on it. Rajo shook free of their mantle, shivering in the wind. Turning in a snarl of bad, dirty yarn was better than getting in trouble for losing _another_ spindle whorl though. They dropped the heavy wool over all of it, scooping up yarn, spindle and bow, and no small portion of sand.

Rajo hefted the untidy bundle, careful not to step on the cloth too much as they hurried down the canyon. Time enough to untangle everything later, when they reached their secret place. It was even warmer than the canyon floor, and the crystals in the walls there reflected the wandering fire well enough to make the work almost easy.

Two-thirds of the way down the canyon, they almost dropped it all again. Something was moving in the shadows at the foot of the last target board - the low, charred one that Nabooru broke her hand on that morning. Rajo heard her swearing when she came back to the fortress early, and had snuck away from their lessons to hear better. Nabs always had the most interesting stories. She didn’t say what happened at all, but she was really mad at the bridge sisters.

But when the Rova called the bridge sisters into the courtyard, they huffed and tossed their heads like stubborn horses, and called Nabs a liar. But Nabs _never_ lied. Not really.

Rajo held their breath, tiptoeing closer to the canyon wall. If they moved slow and quiet, maybe whatever-it-was wouldn’t notice them. Or maybe they should run through the twilight again. That might be better - but it was getting late.

They edged closer to the crevasse that joined the first canyon to the second, watching the shadows more than their own feet - which is how they noticed the little glitter of light coming from the moving shadow sometimes. And then they realized it wasn’t just the wind moaning.

Rajo thought about running - but which way? Home? They were closer to their secret place now, but they had to climb to get there, and that was never fast. Belatedly, Rajo realized they wouldn’t be able to carry anything while they climbed. Or at least, not like this.

“Tits and _balls_ ,” said Rajo.

The shadow yelped - but in a broken and wheezing way. Like when the Rova started to fix Dira’s smooshed-up legs, before her eyes rolled back and she stopped moving.

Rajo dropped their burden and ran.

“Stop, stop it,” cried Rajo, stumbling, sliding on their knees as the shadow bunched up and fell back with another pitiful yelp.

“Nnnn-” it said.

Rajo caught a fistful of damp wool, pulling the other child back by their purple tunic as they tried again to rise. “Stop - you make it worse, stupid.”

The other child sobbed, shoving their face against the sand. They looked weird and splotchy in the dim light, and their ears were the longest Rajo had ever seen. And now they could see what caught the light.

“Nnngho _hay-_!” said the stranger to the ground, shattering Rajo’s thoughts before they could be sure what they were.

“No,” said Rajo. “Lay still, stupid. Don’t you know anything?”

The other child sobbed, trying to curl in a little ball. But their arm was bent around the wrong way, so Rajo could still reach the stones on their loose, double-looped bracelets. They were warm and slick to the touch, but the magic woke easily. It tickled under their skin, and cast a soft green light around both of them.

The stranger squeaked like a startled cat, rolling over a little. Rajo crawled forward, keeping one fist in the stranger’s tunic for balance and to keep them from rolling out of reach.

“Let me help, stupid. Do you _want_ monsters to eat you?”

The stranger moaned, shoving their face in the sand again. It was a stupid way to try to escape, really. But that meant Rajo could reach the stranger’s wide necklace. Maybe they didn’t know what they had, or maybe they didn’t have enough magic yet to make it work.

But Rajo did.

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

Rajo set their back against the warm, smooth stone, watching the stranger in the dark. The magic had made both of them a little dizzy, but that was a good thing. Rajo shoved the mantle and everything at the other and dragged them along before they could argue. They made it to the Dragon’s Stairs just before true night fell, and Rajo opened the shadows at its foot. The stranger had screamed - but it was a short sprint up the weird, winding twilight path, and they reached the end of it before any of the creatures on the other side could catch them.

“I’ve never seen you before,” said Rajo.

The stranger sat down against the opposite wall, pulling their knees to the chest. They stared with their wide eyes, but they didn’t answer. Maybe they didn’t know it was a question.

“What happened, anyway? Why didn’t you use your summer stones? Are you lost?”

The stranger laughed, but it wasn’t a funny laugh. “Maybe we all are.”

“You’re weird,” said Rajo.

“Why did you do it?” said the stranger, tipping their weird pale face to one side.

“Do what?”

The stranger brushed dirt from their knees. Not like it would help. Their gray trousers were torn in at least six places. “You know what, Rajolaan.”

“Are you a spirit?” blurted Rajo.

The stranger smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. “My name is Link.”

“Do you bring my Name?”

“Yes and no,” said Link.

Rajo waited, but Link didn’t say anything else. So Rajo tipped their head back to watch the wandering fire through the crystal eye in the ceiling of the little squared-off cave. The pattern of the dance made them feel better, and they pull their mantle up to the their shoulders, letting their mind empty of everything but the patterns.

“This is a beautiful place,” said Link.

“Yeah,” said Rajo. “You gotta keep it secret though.”

“Why?”

Rajo frowned at Link. “Because. It’s mine, and I said so.”

“But you brought me here.”

“Yeah, so?” Rajo shook their head, sinking a little lower against the wall. “It was close, and the wind is bad at night. Also monsters.”

“Fair enough,” said Link. “How did you find it? When?”

“Nabs gave it to me, for my year-gift in the raining summer.”

Link was quiet for a while, and Rajo couldn’t quite tell whether they were watching the wandering fire or not. “When did Nabooru change?”

Rajo considered this. “After. When the mothers named her avadha Saiev.”

“Why?”

Rajo shrugged. “Everyone’s different when they’re big.”


	2. Chapter 2

The soft ethereal trill of a flute teased at the edge of the dream, unravelling the whispering voice and the tangled fog of the dream-swamp. The reaching, snatching, twisted thorntrees drew back, stretching their talons toward the heavens and weaving one with the other with glimmers of starlight between, until they formed a latticework pattern that seemed to hold secrets upon secrets in their branches.

Rajo reached to touch the patterns, and started awake when their fingers brushed the worn seams of the square cave walls. The strange gray-green stone of their secret place proved warm as it was bright - and too much of both. But they had cushions - blankets - golden morning light washed over them and the faded patterns of the densely tufted twisthorn rug beneath them.

Rajo tried to scramble to their feet, getting caught in the blankets - too many, and all wrong. They smelled strange and their colors were dull - and they were still in the square cave with its great glass eye. The music stopped, and silence filled their ears with its dreadful menace.

"Wake up, stupid," Rajo said. " _Wake up_ wake UP-"

"Shh - it's ok - I fixed it-" said a strange high voice.

Rajo whirled, pressing their back to the wall - the pale child from the archery range stood over them, hands empty, blue eyes cold. In the way of dreams, he carried no sign of his injuries from the night before, except that his mourning purple tunic showed threadbare places and old bloodstains.

"Get away-" Rajo growled. "You're not real - _I_ am real - I will wake up and you'll be nothing. Nothing!"

The pale child frowned, and took a step back. "No - It's ok - I fixed it- you fell asleep but you were talking - so I made the sun dance but it's ok now, yeah?"

"Go away!" Rajo screamed, clawing free of the winding blankets at last. They drew their long knife - it felt real in their hand, as real as the walls, as the morning - but it couldn't be. They couldn't have fallen asleep - certainly not with the weird stranger so close - and never for so long. Anyways the square cave didn't have anything in it but sand and rocks and one old shawl Rajo got in trouble for losing, and maybe one of their missing spindles.

It had to be a dream.  
But they couldn't wake up.

"I fixed it -" said the pale child, desperately, pointing to a bright blue-purple stone laying on a square of colorless cloth at the center of the square cave. It pulsed with strange magic that hurt to look at.

The sky above the great glass eye shone in the blinding white-blue of morning, but the hard-edged entry passage lay in night's shadow with starlight and whistling wind beyond. At the edge of the rug they'd woken up on lay the broken bow and their spindle, but they weren't tangled anymore. The bad yarn they'd made last night had been finished and wound off in a neat skein, with most of the sand shaken off. But there was new yarn on their spindle, finer than they'd ever spun, and all in shifting oasis colors no one ever let the ilmaha ruin.

There was one other way to make the dream end. It hurt, and they would wake up tired, but it always worked.

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

Rajo woke to the trill of a flute in their ear, sharp and hollow sounding, as if the player didn't have the wind for the task. Confused, they tried to sit up, but the blankets were so heavy, and the morning was too bright, and their throat hurt.

"Balls," Rajo swore instead.

The music stopped.

Rajo squinted against the blinding light above, wondering vaguely why the window was on the ceiling. It almost looked like the eye of the square cave - but that was silly. They were surely in their own bed in the fortress, oversleeping the call to lessons.

"Shh, it's ok now," whispered a small voice. "I fix it."

Rajo froze. That was the stranger's voice. Link. But that was impossible - Rajo tried to untangle the blankets, but everything was so heavy, and a wave of dizziness sloshed through them even though they were laying down, and Rajo had to bite their tongue to keep their stomach from turning inside out.

"Don't move, ok? The magic needs time. But it's ok, I fixed it. You can sleep as long as you want, it's ok."

"I have to go home," Rajo said, though it hurt to talk and they sounded like a squeaky door.

"Shh," said Link. "Not yet. When you're better, I take you to dawn. Now, you rest. Our secret ok?"

"Sun's already up, stupid. Gonna be in trouble for _weeks,_ " said Rajo.

"No," said Link, resting his hand feather-light on Rajo's shoulder. Rajo turned to look at him, ignoring the throbbing pain through their neck and shoulder as they moved. "Told you. I _fixed it._ Good magic. Our secret, yeah?"

Rajo frowned up at him. His pale face was splattered with blood spots and streaked with sand and snot. "If it's good magic, why are you crying?"


	3. Chapter 3

_Long ago tomorrow, in the place where the gods dream, there will live a beautiful princess. Good and Kind and Wise, even when she will be little. Everything she dreams comes true, but one day, there is a bad dream. A great black storm comes from the west, swallowing everything green and good, the castle in ruins, the rivers dry, the great mountain overflowing with fire. No one important will listen to this dream, not even the King._

_The princess walks in her garden, trying to solve the dreaming, for she dreams the storm again and again, but still no one will listen. Through the window she sees a stranger come to bow before the King, but his heart does not bow with him. He sees her through the window, and she understands - he is the storm…_

**\- o - O - o -**

Rajo blinked awake again, their tongue too dry even to swear. The acrid scent of red potion filled their nostrils, and they were drenched with sweat despite the cold. Which made about as much sense as the weight of Link's arm thrown over their chest or the searing afternoon sun glaring at them through the great glass eye above.

Rajo turned their head carefully, grinding their teeth at the pain. Link was asleep, his dirty face pressed tight against their shoulder. He commanded strange magic that could turn the world inside out, but he refused to leave Rajo alone even when sleep ambushed them in the middle of a story.

Rajo frowned, trying to knit together the memory of that morning. Nothing made sense - but at least the nightmares hadn't come during the day. Maybe they couldn't. Or maybe Link's weird magic infected everything with madness, from the heavens to their very bones, rendering night into day and heat into cold until the whole world was a puzzlebox.

Link muttered in his sleep, and with a sinking dread Rajo realized his words weren't simply nonsense. They were _Hylian_ words. That's why he looked weird and pale, why his speech was bumpy and disordered. Why Rajo found him broken in the place Nabs said she broke her hand, and why she blamed it on the bridge sisters when the Rova asked questions. They guarded the easiest path joining the land of the People with their decadent, bloodthirsty neighbor.

Link was a _spy._

Nabs was clever - she let the Rova finish the story for her, assume they brawled over something petty, and no one could ever say she lied to them. She just… didn't tell them they were wrong, and it wasn't against the law to let people be stupid.

But - why didn't Nabs drag him to the fortress and let the mothers deal with him? She was bigger and stronger and even meaner than anyone when she wanted to be. Rajo no longer wondered how Link came to misadventure, but rather why she left her work unfinished. And she really wasn't fond of the bridge sisters, so why _not_ let them get in trouble for letting him sneak across?

Unless she had some reason to hide Link that was important enough to risk getting called before the mothers as a traitor. But - if that were so - then why did she beat him at all?

"Had to," slurred Link. "Must go if."

Rajo's head throbbed with the frustration of trying to untangle the madness. They needed to get home - talk to Nabs. She knew something important, something the Rova wouldn't like. Something… Link was trying to learn? Had learned?

"Bad things," Link murmured with a sniffle. "Doing bad things many tomorrows. Had to. _Had to_. Can't let you."

Rajo frowned at the sun overhead as Link's mad rambling subsided into helpless sobs. He had to be the _worst_ spy in the history of all spies _ever._

**\- o - O - o -**

The angle of the golden light through the great glass eye changed while sleep ambushed them. Again.

They rolled onto their side painfully, swearing again at the sheer stupid difficulty of it. They'd lost count of - well, almost everything, now. But they were alone in the square cave.

Again.

Rajo tied another knot in the littlest braid hanging before their left ear, and ran their fingers over its length. Four awakenings alone, in the daylight. Rajo checked the same tiny braid on the right - still three, but one came with the moon at the east, and the other at the west.

So it was still the third day. Probably.

Rajo pried the loose cork from the beautiful pale green bottle and drank as much of the clear water as they could manage. Every swallow hurt, so they held it on their tongue until the last possible moment. This was the third bottle of the six Link left them, labelled like the rest in lopsided scrawls that might read _'water'_ if you squinted hard enough.

The fat clay jar with the label _'gud - ete'_ held something almost as precious: hundreds of paper-thin medallions of honey-glass, packed in fine white root powder to keep them from sticking together. Those were exquisite torture to hold against their tongue until they dissolved. Rajo made the mistake of biting through the very first one and couldn't even scream it hurt so much.

Rajo was glad Link had been away then.

They lay in frustrated idleness a long time, watching the light move across the little square cave, trying to decipher the worn patterns of the gray-green walls and rust orange floor newly revealed where the bloodstained sand had been scraped away.

 _"You did a bad thing,"_ was all Link would say about it, before he left.

Well.  
That and _"I fix it."_  
Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Rajo pulled the blankets higher, cursing as another cold wind knifed through the cave, and wished for Nabs.

**\- o - O - o -**

Rajo woke next to searing rose-pink light and a fluttering, whisper-soft tickle across their face. They couldn't see anything but pink - but somehow there was an impression of wings in it, and of bells.

"Shh, don't move," whispered Link from somewhere on the other side of the light.

"Can't see," Rajo whispered back.

A laugh like dancing bells and rain filled their ears, and a great flood of warm washed through them, fizzing under their skin like the Rovas' purple potion inside a glass jar. And somehow they tasted King's Honey on their lips when the fluttery feeling passed over it.

"What is-" Rajo began, startled by the strange loudness of their own voice.

"I went to the great fairy," said Link. "I promised to help the little ones hide from the bad magic."

Rajo squinted into the light, trying to make out anything at all. The beautiful laugh filled their ears again, and the intolerable heaviness lifted all at once. They would have pushed to their feet but for the dizziness when they tried even to sit upright. The pink light whirled around them three times, and vanished in a peal of laughter, leaving them alone with Link in the muted shadows of the square cave at twilight.

"Why bother," said Rajo, realizing as they spoke that their throat didn't hurt anymore. "You're one of _them._ You shouldn't even be here. We're _enemies._ "

"You helped me. So I try to help you. But I couldn't stop you."

Rajo frowned at him as they twisted to put their back against the wall. Link knelt beside the bloodstained rug, hands folded on his knees. The weird blue-purple gem lay behind him at the center of the cave still - and the passage out remained in deepest shadow.

"So we're even," said Rajo. "I don't owe you anything. Go home, spy - don't try to follow."

Link sniffled pathetically and wiped his nose on his dirty sleeve. "Yeah. Take your magic road. Is almost dawn anyway."

Rajo frowned as they pushed to their feet. "How do you know about that-?"

Link shrugged. "You brought me here."

"That was at twilight," said Rajo, glancing up at the great glass eye as they snatched up their stained mantle. A mark, or maybe a little less in the soft amber twilight, and they had a long way to run. The spindle would just have to be lost like the last one.

"I'm sorry," said Link.

Rajo bared their teeth as they edged toward the passage door. "I don't _care_."

"I know," said Link, wiping his nose and sniffling. But he didn't rise, or try to stop them - so when Rajo reached the door, they turned and fled, stumbling over some stupid rock in the passage.

The wind howled - and Rajo stepped out onto the Dragon's Stairs under the charcoal skies of false dawn.

Not twilight.

Rajo stopped at the edge of the first stair, still slightly dizzy from the magic - the wind tried to tear their mantle away as they reached for the magic. It was hard to focus with their stomach roaring in fury. They didn't know how long it had been since they had real food - four marks maybe, before they left the fortress. But that was probably days ago now.

The magic stuttered and fell away - if it was dawn, it was early to try to call it - but it should have been twilight. Rajo turned at the sound of a flute behind them - but they were alone on the stair. The passage to their square cave lay in shadow - at least it was a little out of the wind - if Link was busy with his stupid flute maybe he wouldn't notice Rajo waiting for the magic to be easier. 

But as they crept back into the shelter of it, they could see the crystals in the walls of the cave were glowing faintly amber the way they did in the deep of night. Link was playing his flute, but not sitting beside the rug - there was no rug at all. The square cave was empty but for Link, and the blue-purple stone - and another child, slumped against the opposite wall wrapped in sand-and-ochre cloth so only their long red braids showed.

And the great glass eye above them looked out on stars.

Rajo swore, but Link didn't look up from his playing, and the child didn't move.

Rajo took one step closer, and stumbled again on some stupid rock they couldn't see - and the cave ahead flooded with the soft beauty of twilight.

"Din's fire," Rajo swore.

The child was gone, and where they had been now lay the bloodstained rug and everything else they'd just left behind. Link knelt in the middle of it all, watching Rajo with his wide blue eyes.

Rajo turned around - outside the cave, it was still false dawn.

"I told you," said Link in a quiet voice. "I fixed it."


	4. Chapter 4

_Long ago tomorrow, death will come to the deathless place. The guardian becomes sadness, and sent the spirit treasure to the King, so he would know what happens. But the King will not hear the forest any more than he heard the princess._

_The wise princess will send warnings in secret to the mountains and to the river, but the stranger had been there first. He refused to make bad things stop unless they gave him their spirit treasure, and the guardians did not trust him. They will send their treasures to the wise princess instead, but a great storm comes, with bad magic in it._

_The stranger made himself King, and for seven years, all was as the princess dreamed..._

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

Roast lamb dressed with harissa and honey lingered on the tongue like blasphemy. Unrepentant, Rajo slathered another round of flat bread with rich yogurt and piled it high with pickled vegetables, alternating ice and fire, feasting with both hands.

They knew at once the row of lidded pots Link unveiled were stolen from Her altar, but their stomach roared at the first scent when he lifted one lid in silent invitation. The Mother of Sands could either forgive them or smite them - and until She did, Rajo was too hungry to care. 

They were caught raiding the kitchens, the first morning they returned. For that, they were banished from the table the rest of the day. Nabooru slipped them some field rations during the midday quiet - better than nothing, but only just. 

They fell asleep in lessons later that day - stupid, with nearly a week of almost nothing but sleeping inside the Link-spirit's spell circle. For this they would stand in all their lessons the rest of the week. So Rajo got out their spindle.

The week became three.

Nabooru was reassigned watch over their section, no doubt because of them. Everyone knew it was impossible to sneak past Nabs. There was no chance to talk with her. No good if she should get in trouble too. 

They stole one of her soft high-collared tunics on the second morning, and a tin of the gold-brown paste she used on holidays to smooth over the peahat scars from when she was very little. She pretended not to notice the theft, though she teased them for being colorblind, pairing cornflower blue with a beetroot pink and onion-gold shawl.

No one else noticed anything at all, and they thought that would be the end of it. Except the weavers went to the Rova that evening, demanding to know who spun the oasis yarns they found buried in the ilmaha's baskets, insisting they be reassigned to their division at once. Their mothers, the Great Rova twins Koume and Kotake cast a Knowing on the yarns, right there in the hall of the people, in front of everyone, and Rajo was certain their life was over.

The spirit echoes on the wool rose in glorious sparkling many-colored light, and the sound of bells and the howling of wolfos echoed from stone to stone. Kotake demanded the spirit take more solid form, and Koume refined its chaotic noise into something like speech.

But the wisp that formed didn’t look like the Link-spirit at all, or Rajo. Instead, a pair of laughing Poe whirled about the hall, swinging their lanterns and crying, “Good! Wonderful! You liked it? You like it fairy boy? Good stuff isn’t it? Just your colors. They give you the best presents when you’re dead!”

Koume shrieked at them. “What are you doing out of your box, you harlot?”

“Nevermind that,” spat Kotake. “I want to know how you’ve kept your talons in the world, you conniving, thieving rat.”

The poes’ shades laughed again, hovering near the yarn. “Ha! As if you have any wind for speaking. Should have learned to _spell_ my sisters - you wanted _life eternal_ , and got yourselves eternal _ugly!_ ”

 _No one_ talked back to the Eldest Rova. Not even the powerful spirits summoned for their lessons, not even the voice in the blue gem.

Rajo snuck out of the hall just before the explosions started, threaded through with the laughter of the mad poes singing a nonsense rhyme about a green fairy. 

For this, they lost access to the magic workrooms and spellbook archive for a week, but so did everyone else. When the Great Rova were truly angry, _all_ the people walked softly.

On the third day, Nabooru spoke the truth when the Rova asked whether Rajo was alone when she caught them trying to steal the storehouse key.

For this, Rajo was allowed to eat only what was left after everyone else finished, and forbidden all the archives. 

For _another_ week.

To say the Rova were furious about their disgrace would be to say the black winds were unpleasant. 

Rajo was certain they would go mad - no matter how they tried to follow the rules - or how careful they were when they couldn't bear to do so - everything went wrong. Even their spinning was worse than before, though the weaving masters swore that should be impossible. It was all so immeasurably stupid - of course there were _reasons_ for the laws, and generally Rajo agreed with those reasons. If everyone stole from the storehouse whenever they pleased and ate however much they pleased, the People would go hungry before very many days were measured.

But Rajo was _hungry_. They shouldn't have to give any more reason than that - it wasn't _at all_ like stealing festival cakes just because they liked them. Rajo returned from the Link-spirit's spell circle in the observatory above the Lady's Quiver so hungry they ate three raw, tasteless, gummy leaves from a pin-pad plant on the walk back to the fortress. _After_ eating a handful of honey-glass _and_ the bag of weirdly bitter nuts Link made them take when they refused to stay any longer. 

On the seventh day, Rajo swore never to tell anyone about the Link-spirit just to spite the division-masters for making them follow stupid laws that shouldn't apply to them. Serve them all right if he visited every one among them with bad dreams.

The only good thing about it was the only bad dreams that could reach them were all about food that either vanished or turned into gross things when they tried to eat it. 

On the ninth day, they didn't put the cosmetic on well enough, and Nabs noticed the new scar. She stole them away before lessons, demanding to know what happened. Rajo refused - and when she yelled, they yelled back. If she really cared about anything but her own stupid wealth and glory she wouldn't betray them.

That night she 'forgot' to make Rajo bolt their shutters and give her the key.

Rajo secretly promised to forgive her - in the morning - as they emerged from the shadows of twilight to find the Link-spirit sitting in the observatory among stolen temple pots, with a plate of honeyed nut-meat cakes on the cloth next to his magic stone.


	5. Chapter 5

_Long ago tomorrow, in the time of the great storm, the wise princess will travel in secret, braving the madness of endarkened guardians in search of the legendary six sages. She endured seven years of trial alone, until the gate of the gods' broken dreaming will be open again._

_The spirits of the six lost sages will be gathered to unmake the storm, and the magic of the great fairies returned the land to the keeping of the wise princess. But the darkness did not lift with the death of the usurper King, or the great beast which will come after._

_The princess used the place of the gods' dreaming to unravel the years, and return all things to how they were before the storm. But death will hold the deathless guardians, as the gods' dreaming held the lost-and-found sages, and the great fairies hide, as they once did in the long ago tomorrow, when the bad magic was beginning..._

 

\- o - O - o -

 

Rajo sprawled on the stained twisthorn wool rug, watching the wandering fire dance across the sky. Link hummed a strange, eerie melody as he spun their wool into finer, smoother yarn than Rajo had ever yet managed. The weaving masters would ask questions, but when did they not? Let them yell about uneven quality - what did it matter if it wasn't all the same so long as it was finished? Fine or heavy, even or lumpy, it made cloth either way.

Rajo folded their hands behind their head, drinking in the beauty of the night sky. "What makes the magic bad? Your stories only say it is dark, but dark isn't bad, it just _is_. Like lightning or wind or a wild thing. So what's so bad about it?"

Link stopped humming, but the soft whir of the spindle continued. "Why do you have to be like that? Why can't you just be _good_?"

Rajo frowned. "What do you know about anything anyway, _Hylian_?"

"Enough," said Link. He sulked in silence, flicking the spindle with irritation.

Rajo just watched the wandering fire and wallowed in the heaviness of the feast. Their stomach hurt it was so full, but it was a glorious pain, and they could still taste the forbidden spices on their tongue.

"The bad magic hurts people," Link said at last. "People will _die_ , Rajolaan."

"People die all the time," said Rajo with a shrug. "Everyone knows that."

"Why do you have to _be_ like that? You don't even sound sorry." Link muttered.

"Why should I be? The gods made that rule, not me."

"Because," said Link. "Dying _hurts_. You should be sorry when people die, and extra sorry when they didn't get to be old first, and even more when it's because of _you_ -"

Rajo rolled to their hands and knees and snarled at him. "Stupidhead! Cucco-brained moon-face! You think you can say whatever because you're big, but you don't know _anything_! The stories I told you - those were accidents, ok?”

Link froze, blue eyes wide. The spindle slowed and spun around the wrong way, but he didn't notice.

"Being sorry doesn't _do_ anything, stupid. Being sorry doesn’t make it unhappen. And anyway some people are better off dead - Dira would have become a great warrior - now they cannot even walk without potions - how will they find their Name in the Sands now? Poe and Stalfos don't _care_ , so why should I? Why should anyone?" Rajo snapped.

"Because," said Link, eyes shining in the dim light from the wall-crystals and the wandering fire and his blue-purple magic stone. "Hurting people is _bad_ , Rajolaan."

"That's not fair! I haven't done anything," Rajo scrambled to their feet. "Things just happen, ok? You're just like everyone else - talking about omens and magic and watching - always _watching_ \- just because I'm different, just because I'm not _perfect_ \- If I'd known you'd be so _stupid-_ "

The spindle fell to the floor and rolled away to bump against the magic stone. The blue-purple light flared, and rushed back to the stone with a _pop_ that made their ears ring. The crystals in the walls lost their light, and the wandering fire blinked out as the stars wound forward to dawn.

Link vanished.

Rajo blinked at the empty room, confused by all the sand. Link swept all of it out while they were back at the fortress, and washed away the bloodstains too - but it was all back.

"Why did you do it?" Link murmured in Hylian from somewhere behind them.

Rajo turned, throat tight, tongue too dry to work. Link knelt behind them at the edge of the stained rug, facing away. At his side, the jar of honey-glass and all six bottles full of water, the yarn and the broken bow, and the spindle full of the oasis yarn Rajo had hidden in the weavers baskets.

"Do what?" Rajo whispered.

Link whirled about, startled, drawing a short leaf-shaped blade from somewhere. Behind him, Rajo saw red braids and a bundle of bloodstained blankets.

Rajo took a step back, and Link lowered the sword.

"Everything," he said in Hylian. His pale face was streaked with dirt and tear-tracks, and though he spoke softly his face snarled. “You lie. You steal. You break things. You hurt people.”

“You're not real,” whispered Rajo, but they didn’t quite believe themselves. “ _I_ am real - I will wake up-“

“No,” said Link. “You won’t.”

Rajo swallowed hard, balling their hands into fists at their sides, and thought of Nabs. “Am I dead?”

Link shook his head, and hid the sword again. “Not anymore in this time. Not yet.”

“Are _you_ dead?”

Link sniffed and rubbed his fist across his weird little nose. “Why did you heal me?”

Rajo opened their mouth to speak, but a hand cold as the night wind snatched at their own as the blue light of Link's spell-circle flared with a great ringing loudness bigger than music, bigger than anything. Rajo screamed as Link vanished and another frozen hand clamped hard over their mouth. Rajo bit the hand and fought - but the blue light made them dizzy and clumsy, so they only fell to their knees and scraped their hands on the bare rust-streaked floor of the square observatory cave.

“It’s ok,” said Link in their ear. “I fixed it.”

Rajo’s stomach turned inside out.

 

 

**\- o - O - o -**

 

 

Link helped them out of their soiled mantle and tunic, and wrapped them in mostly-clean blankets. He carried all the dirty things outside, and came back soon after with fragrant cedar wood and a bag of rocks. He built a tiny fire around a three-legged pot, and spun while he waited for tea. Rajo sat on the rug with their back against the cave wall and tried not to shame themselves again.

Link’s blue magic was fine as long as they didn’t think about it, didn’t cross in or out of it, didn’t look directly at the stone that seemed to be the focus of it. Whatever it was, whatever it was for, Rajo hated it. Everything that happened since the blue stone lit up was horrible.

Silence stood between them a long time, until Rajo had to bite their tongue to keep from falling asleep. Link brought them a stoneware cup smelling of green and heavy with King’s Honey.

“Is that the bad magic?”

Link shook his head. “It will keep you warm. You like it.”

“Not the tea, stupid. The rock.” Rajo scowled, and cradled the plain cup in both hands, letting the steam coil up their nose. They tried not to wonder why Link knew they would like it.

Link looked confused, but he followed their gaze when they nodded toward the pulsing blue-purple stone. Link had tucked it with its white cloth into one the empty feast-pots to prevent more accidents, but still its baleful glow spoiled the warm light of the amber wall-crystals.

“Oh,” Link hung his head, and his cheeks turned pink. “It is dangerous magic, but not bad. I’m sorry it scared you Rajenaya - I will find the key in this before, and I will fix it, and then you will be good, and the storm will stay away.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Rajo lied. “Will I get my Name before I die?”

Link turned too quickly and stumbled, squeaking a wordless question.

“You _are_ some kind of weird spirit, yeah? You know how I will die,” said Rajo, tasting the tea. It burned their lips, but it was sweet and reminded them of the white flowers in the court of the oasis fortress. “Do I get a Name first? Is it a good one?”

“Yes and no.” Link murmured, licking his lips.

Rajo rolled their eyes. “Don’t be stupid. Yes and no are opposites. It can’t be both.”

Link sat down next to the fire, wrapping his arms around his knees. His gray trousers were still torn and dirty, but he didn’t seem to care. Nor did he notice the summerstones in his jewelry were shining all on their own. Rajo didn’t see any new wounds on him, but maybe he still had bruises under his purple tunic. Or maybe something happened while he was getting firewood.

“Why did you help me?”

Rajo sipped the tea more carefully. “You ask that lots.”

“It’s important,” said Link, dropping his chin on his knees.

Rajo shrugged. “Because.”

“But why?”

“Because!” Rajo groaned, dropping their head back against the wall to stare out the great crystal eye. “I don’t know ok? Why do you have to be stupid about it? I made your summerstones work, you brought the pink fairy. We’re even, yeah?”

“No,” said Link. “You did a bad thing, I just fixed it. Fixing things is good. Heroes fix things. I am good.”

“And I’m not?”


	6. Chapter 6

_Long ago tomorrow, in the time of the storms, three sacred treasures were sealed away in the place of the gods' broken dreaming. The guardians of forest and fire and water become sadness and chaos, and the spirits grow weak. Monsters and ghosts come to live in the ruined shrines, and darkness covered everything._

_People flee to the forest, and were turned into stalfos and skullkid. The King will send his army even through the sacred woods, and seal the corrupted shrine with a construct of dark magic._

_No one fled up the mountains, for they rained fire and ash. The mountain people will vanish, for the King resurrected the bones of their ancient enemy, the dragon who once laired in the corrupted shrine under the highest peak._

_The lakes and rivers will dry up for the springs had all frozen over. The water people were lost under the ice, their eggs taken for experiments to impress the King, their warriors swallowed by the monstrous hunger in the corrupted shrine._

_Where the great castle of light once stood guard above a thriving town, the usurper King will raise a dark and terrible tower over a city of lost souls. Corrupted spirits will forge mindless puppet warriors for his army, and corrupted shadows will breed ravening monsters to consume whatever remains._

_Many died, in the time of storms._

 

**_\- o - O - o -_ **

 

Link sat a long time in silence, and Rajo drank their cooling tea. He was right: it tasted wonderful, and it felt warm all over, but in a lighter way than the pink fairy. Rajo wondered where it came from, and what it was made of.

It was nicer to think about than the stories. Link answered almost everything in riddles, or exciting, terrible stories that wandered about, somehow going nowhere. He was only a little bigger than Rajo, but his sour silences reminded them of Nabs after she came back from her first season of raids.

After the feast for the warriors, and after she gave Rajo new bone hair combs, she went to the Lady’s Quiver with the other Saiev even though it was night. After that, she locked herself in her room for days, and wouldn’t come out for anything, even when Dira fell into the corral with the new string of horses and the rest of the fortress was all noise and hurrying.

The Rova banished them from the sickroom when Dira’s eyes rolled back, but nobody had unlocked the ilmaha's sleeping quarters yet. So Rajo climbed through Nabs’ window instead and found her laying on the floor, sick. She’d smelled terrible, worse than the bad air in the bottle of King’s Tears Rajo stole once. But the smell wasn’t really the worst part - the worst part was the quiet. She didn’t say anything at all, and her mind made no pictures when Rajo touched her spirit gem.

So Rajo unlocked the hall door and snuck into the small storeroom and stole a blue potion for her.

It helped, but even though she was better, she was weirdly quiet for weeks, and afterwards she always had a strange look whenever Rajo caught her staring at them. Not as much this winter, but she was always busy in the sword-courts or the training grounds now.

"You said the bad magic didn't die with the Storm King."

Link nodded, thinning out a lump of tangled wool as he made Rajo's spindle dance in the air.

"So it isn't because of him or it's not his, anyway," said Rajo. "Magic can't do anything on its own. When the caster dies, the spell ends. It's the rules."

"What are rules to a thief?" Link shrugged without looking up from his spinning.

Rajo rolled their eyes. "You're stupid even for a Hylian. Magic is like oil - even if you steal extra, that doesn't make the lamp any bigger or brighter or put it back together if it cracks."

"Not always."

"Ok," said Rajo, drinking more of the strange, sweet tea. "Maybe not for the gods. Because gods don't die, not really, and they're bigger than anything and part of everything. Like sand or water or wind or fire. But gods can't be kings. It's the rules."

"Demons don't follow rules," Link snarled.

"Everything follows rules," said Rajo. "Not knowing the pattern doesn't make it not be there. Even the wandering fire has rules."

"And what rule makes it ok to hurt people?"

"Pfft. Lots of them. Don't you know anything? Don't spirits have their own Rova?"

"I'm not a spirit."

"Whatever," said Rajo. "You have that blue stone magic too strong for people, but you couldn't even use a summerstone. So."

"So what?"

"So everything. You're friends with that other spirit aren't you? The pink one?"

"Fairy," said Link.

"And those crazy Poe?"

"What Poe?"

"The ones who gave you the oasis yarn. They made trouble when the weavers took it to the Rova you know."

Link frowned, winding the long tail of new yarn tightly around the cop. "How should I? I didn't get that from - look, ghosts didn't have anything to do with that, ok? It was - a gift."

"Whatever, they knew you, so it's good luck for us the Rova haven't noticed your weird Hylian spirit magic yet."

Link toyed with the spindle, staring at the rust-colored floor of the observatory cave. "Us."

Rajo frowned, poking at the sludge of leaves and King's Honey in the bottom of their teacup. "Where'd you get this from anyway?"

"Get what?" Link answered without looking up.

"All of this. I mean, I know you stole the feast, but all the rest. The ugly blankets and the tea and the summerstones and King's Honey and stuff."

Link scowled at Rajo's spindle in his hands, but said nothing.

"It's ok," said Rajo with a shrug, twisting the cup so the sludge would ooze closer to the rim. "I won't tell anyone you stole it. I just want to know how you get past the storehouse guards. The Exalted is super tough and she trained all of them, even Nabs."

"Didn't steal," Link mumbled.

"Horseshits," said Rajo, in between scoops of leaf-honey sludge.

Link snarled, and snatched the spindle in his fist, pulling his arm quickly back.

Rajo dropped the cup at once and scrambled to their knees to dodge a blow which stopped before it began.

Link opened his mouth but no words came out. His splotchy face and stupid wordless squeak made Rajo angry.

"Go on, do it," Rajo spat. "I'm not afraid of you - I'm not afraid of anyone! Who died and put you in charge of good and ungood anyway, huh? Stupid spirit doesn't know anything - take your stupid blue magic and go fix your own stupid country! Why did you come here anyway? No one wants you here. Just go back where you came from. _Go home_."

Link lowered the spindle in his fist, lip trembling. His raspy whisper filled the observatory cave with silence. "I can't."

“Stupid Hylian," Rajo sighed, shoving stray braids behind their ears. "I'll bring you a stupid map."

"Nonono-" burbled Link, shaking his head. "No map untangles the woods."

Rajo frowned. "You don't look much like the Kokiri in books."

Link dropped the spindle and sobbed, blurring his babbling lament. But Rajo was just as good with words as magic - maybe even better. Their Hylian was perfect - better than perfect, because they could read and speak Old Hylian, Courtly, and Common. It just sounded better with a drawling accent.

Also it made the teacher's face go funny shades of purple.

"The forest closed. Did everything they told me to do. Believed the legend - I did - did everything - but then she said she was sorry. She said she would fix the wrongness. But they're all gone and the forest is closed. Did everything they asked me to do. Fixed it, but my friends are all gone, so it isn't fixed at all and the forest is closed. They said I was a hero, but they're all gone and the bad magic comes back. Can't be green anymore. Have to fix it."

Rajo felt a chill creep up their spine, even though the air was still in the observatory cave. The stories were really _really_ real.

Rajo paced around the cave. It was easier to think when they were moving.

"Your friends. They died in the time of storms, didn't they?"

Link nodded and dropped his face into his hands, his golden hair falling in a wild curtain all around.

"The Storm King in your stories. They died because of him."

Link just sobbed.

Rajo paced, trying to remember what the Rova's books said about the Kokiri and the sacred deepwood. There wasn't much - the books all said it was dangerous and unpredictable, and maps only went to the very edge where the trees still let the sky through. They shivered just thinking about how small and close everything must be, closing in on you with winding roots and sharp branches, blotting out the patterns of the stars.

"The books say there's a special road in the Lost Woods that shows up to lead the purehearted to the spirits' place. But you _are_ a spirit-"

"Am not," came Link's muffled wail.

Rajo rolled their eyes and crossed to where Link sat by the little fire, curled in on his misery. "Well anyway, it sounds like it's just a magic road. And _I_ know magic."

"Why do you keep helping me?" Link moaned.

"You don't need reasons to help," said Rajo, kneeling beside him. "You just do it."

Link sobbed even harder, so Rajo wrapped their arms around his thin shoulders, pulling him into the blanket too. He was poky, all angles and bone, and he cried like a lost little, shameless and messy.

Rajo waited, petting his silky hair when they thought they couldn't sit still much longer. "I bet you were the best hero spirit. But your friends were people, and people die. It's the rules. The Golden Three said it, so nobody can change it, not even gods."

"Demons-" began Link.

"Nope, not even demons," said Rajo. "Just like they can't make people worship them or obey, they can't make people live forever either. But they _can_ lie."

"Lying is bad," said Link.

Rajo shrugged. "You came from the forest - so you saw the magic road."

"I won't tell you the way even if the forest wasn't closed!"

Rajo rolled their eyes. "I don't _care_ about your stupid forest. I just can't figure out how it works if I don't know what happened when you say the forest closed."

Link moaned and curled into an even tighter ball under the blanket.

Rajo groaned at the wandering fire above, and tried to focus on the puzzle. "You said the bad magic didn't end when the Storm King died. Or the beast, after. So you were there. You saw it."

"I-" said Link.

Rajo waited as long as they could stand to, counting Link's shuddering, wheezing breaths. "You killed the Storm King."

"I-" whispered Link. "I did."

"But that didn't fix it, and the forest closed."

"I," said Link in his smallest voice. "I did a _bad thing_."

Rajo sighed. "Maybe. But the badness belongs to the people who told you to do it, lots more than you."

Link shook his head in mute denial.

"You said, you did everything they told you. You believed them and the legends, which said it was right." Rajo shrugged.

"I had to," murmured Link. "Bad things."

"Yeah," said Rajo. "War is stupid."

Link nodded.

"Lots of rules are stupid, too." Rajo sat back on their heels, pulling Link sideways with the blanket, half into their lap. "We should make new ones."

"You - you can't just-"

"Why not?" Rajo tipped their head back to watch the wandering fire dance. "The stars change their patterns - why not us? I have magic. You have magic - even if it is weird. We could even ask your princess - she has to help people, it's her job."

"But that's not how the legend-"

Rajo made a fart noise, and Link choked when he almost laughed at it. "So what? We'll just write a new one."


	7. Chapter 7

Rajo leaned against the terrace wall, gasping for breath through the soft, heavy wool of the blanket. Dawn began to unravel the shadow roads before they reached the outer walls, and the fraying, twisted paths dropped out from under them when they stumbled over a sunbeam.

Everything moved too quickly, dazzling even in the flat grayness of almost-morning. Rajo wasn't entirely sure what spell they'd cast to break their fall - only that they reached, and something answered in a flash of red lights.

They'd fallen sideways against the chill stone of a west-facing wall, sliding down to the first terrace in a tangle of pain. The shadow of the fortress would hide them for another mark or so, and might still be deep enough to call the magic through. If only the sharp red spots in their eyes would go away and their ears would stop ringing.

Rajo counted heartbeats until they wanted to scream, but nothing changed. It would be stupid calling the magic when they couldn't control it. But - if they were caught like this, the Rova would surely give up on them forever. So they knotted the blanket around their waist and started climbing.

Rajo was not very good at climbing. Second-slowest in their section, even after the training sessions their questions provoked last spring. Forty nights spent climbing the walls armed and at speed, first with ropes and then without, only made everyone else even faster.

Yet they dared not linger for the archers to notice them by mistake.

One of the patrollers above called for light just as Rajo scrambled through the first open window. They lay sprawled on the stone floor, throat tight and limbs screaming, listening to the conversation above. Eventually the voices moved away, cursing moldorm and keese and rats and the slow march of dawn.

Rajo lay still longer, waiting for their racing heart to slow, listening to the quiet and hoping they wouldn't wake anyone important when they got back on their feet. Or on the way back to where they were supposed to be.

Or anywhere else more interesting.

Like a nap.

 

_**\- o - O - o -** _

 

The whisper of beads and tiny copper bells woke them at once. Rajo pretended to keep their eyes closed, and though their hand ached from gripping their shortblade so fiercely they couldn't make their fingers unfold.

Nabooru pushed through the ornamented curtains with an absentminded blasphemy. She yawned enormously, kicking her shoes into a corner as she unwound her sash.

Rajo waited, holding their breath until she laid both her curved longblades into their niche, and hung the bladed spear beside it. Not because they were afraid, but they didn't feel like fighting this early in the day. Nevermind the call to lessons was at least two marks ago.

Rajo they made sure the bed straps creaked under them as they sat up, wincing at the cold sunlight. Nabooru turned, hand floating to her own shortblade automatically. Rajo pretended not to notice, rubbing gunk out of their eyes with the heel of their hand.

"Hey," said Rajo.

"Mother of Sands," groaned Nabooru, burying her face in her hands. "Of course you're playing truant. Can't you stay out of trouble for just _one_ day?"

"It wouldn't be trouble if grownups weren't so stupid." Rajo threw the blankets back and climbed out of Nabs' bed.

"Watch your tongue, cheesebrain."

Rajo rolled their eyes and made fart sounds at her as they crossed to the half-veiled looking-glass to make sure the cosmetics hadn't smeared too much.

Nabs didn't fire back like she usually did, though they could feel her eyes on their back. Rajo could always tell when Nabs was watching them. It helped when they needed to sneak past her.

"Where are your own clothes?"

Rajo shrugged, pushing the rest of the veil back. "They're dirty."

"How did they get dirty?" Nabs folded her arms and looked down her nose at their reflection in the faintly green glass.

Rajo shrugged, frowning at the glass. Worse than the untidy strands everywhere, they'd managed to get disgusting stuff splattered on the lower half of their braids. Dry now, so they might be able to comb it out.

"So," said Nabs. "You took your clothes off and…?"

"I took a walk," said Rajo, carefully slicing through the wool stitches securing their braids.

"At midnight," said Nabs.

"I couldn't sleep," said Rajo.

"Din's Fires - again?"

Rajo shrugged, and gave up trying to untangle it with their fingers. "The others are being noisy. Even Angnu is snoring like a moblin. Where'd you put your combs?"

Nabooru frowned, but she crossed to her desk and dug through the chaos in the drawers for her fancy steel comb. It was made with a hole in the center, to hold it, and each of the three sides had different teeth. She held it out for them, but snatched it back at the last moment. "Don't bend it."

"I'll be careful," Rajo promised as she gave them the comb for real. "Anyways I was busy tonight. Last night. Whatever."

 _Now_ she made fart sounds, flipping her chair around so as to straddle it backwards and rest her corded arms over its worn back. "Doing what?"

"Thinking."

"Don't hurt yourself," said Nabooru.

"Shut up," said Rajo, snarling at the nonsense mess their hair had become. "You know things."

"Yeah," said Nabooru. "Like you need to start with the big teeth and work your way up, and you need to take those clothes off now. It's a bad omen to wear mourning when no one has died."

Rajo pulled loose hairs off the fine side of the comb and tried the biggest teeth. It didn't knock loose much of the dried up stuff, but it did slide through their curls easier. Rajo made a sour face at Nabs for being right, but she made an even sillier one. "Why should I? It's fancy, and I like it. It's too small for you anyway."

"It's nearly too small on _you_ , ox-breath," said Nabooru.

"Were you my age when they died? Who were they? Why are the stitches all glittery? Can I have mirrors on my tunics too?"

Nabooru worked her jaw so the vein stood out on her neck, but she didn't say anything.

"Goat balls," Rajo swore as they tore more hair away from the worst tangle on their left side.

Nabooru coughed, and looked away. "It's from a long time ago. Take it off, Rajenaya."

"Why?"

"It's a bad omen to-"

"Not everyone comes back from Hyrule," said Rajo, using the comb to chip free some dried stuff from the plaits they hadn't unraveled yet.

"That's different," said Nabooru. "Anyways it's not like they were your own family."

"They were daughters of the Sands, weren't they? So they're all our sisters, kinda," said Rajo.

Nabooru scrubbed a hand over her face and stared at the wall. "It's still different. You'll understand when you're older."

Rajo frowned, and unraveled more of the braid. "You should be sorry when people die."

"I am," said Nabooru. "But that doesn't change anything."

"Maybe it should," said Rajo, shaking their head and marveling at the weird prickly, floaty feeling of their hair moving when they moved.

"What do you mean?"

Rajo shrugged, turning to the mirror again. Their face looked strange surrounded by curls, almost like some of the spirits who served the Rova. "They died because of Hyrule. And you should be extra sorry when it's your fault someone dies."

Nabooru sighed, and cursed. "And you stealing my old purple clothes does exactly what towards fixing that?"

"I'm working on that part," said Rajo, working through their curls with the middle-sized comb. "You've seen Hyrule with your own eyes."

"You're not missing anything much," said Nabooru. "Festering middens and rot-brained bullies with fancy gardens."

"They must have something good," said Rajo. "All the strong women go there after the river roars every year."

"You'll understand when you're older."

Rajo frowned. Grownups always tried to end questions that way. Nabs didn't. Usually. "Did the spirits give you your Name in plain words or was it a puzzle?"

Nabooru turned to meet their eye. "Why?"

"Because," said Rajo, lifting their chin. They were about level with each other, or maybe Rajo was a little higher, with Nabs sitting slouched over the chair like that. It made them feel strange, with a warmth somewhere in their stomach. Their skin didn't quite feel like their own this morning, but it wasn't in a crawly way like the blue magic.

"You know it's against the law to-"

"Yeah, mysteries of the sands, I know," said Rajo, waving off her objection. "If you won't tell me, then I need you to get me something from the Rova's library."

Nabooru narrowed her golden eyes. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing," Rajo lied. "I just wanna know things."

Nabooru frowned at them, one sculpted brow rising. "Did you get in a fight with one of the older girls?"

"No," Rajo said, turning away to comb the rest of the nonsense out of their hair. "I just - I was walking, and I was thinking, after the poes in the yarn, are the sands' spirits more like poes, or like... Something else?"

"Dunno," said Nabooru. "What did you see?"

Rajo pretended to be too absorbed in the combing to hear her.

"Out with it, clumsybutt."

Rajo sighed. "I saw a blue-purple light coming from a rock, and it made me sick, ok?"

Nabooru hummed to herself, and set her chin on her arms again. "What did it do _exactly_?"

"The light? It made a circle. I dunno. But I saw things inside it like-"

"A mirror of your nightmares."

Rajo stopped with the comb mid-stroke. "So you've seen it too."

Nabooru didn't say anything, but her eyes went odd somehow.

Rajo set the comb down next to the looking-glass and padded over to stand next to her. They dropped their voice to a whisper, casting a little bubble of look-away spell around them. "I need to know, Nabs. I need to know everything."

"Magic is dangerous," said Nabooru quietly. "Stick to what the Rova teach you, so you grow up strong and smart and rich. You will be great one day - but you're too little to seek your Name yet."

"I won't be little forever," Rajo growled.

"Rajo- look, it doesn't matter what I saw or how the spirits came to me," said Nabooru. "It's different for everyone."

"But you saw the Hylian child-spirit too, and the blue light. You know something important - and I need to know it too. Our secret, yeah?"

"By the Mother's left tit, but you are Murusa made flesh sometimes."

Rajo laughed. The cat-eared demon of tangled thread and lost things had lots of good stories. "You've been to Hyrule. You've even seen the horrible, choking, knotted forest-"

"I'm not taking you there," said Nabooru.

"But you will tell me about it, said Rajo.

"I didn't say that. What happened last week, impling? You're different."

Rajo shrugged, smoothing the fine purple wool over their chest. Maybe the purple mourning clothes they found in Nab's trunks _were_ a little snug. But the fine embroidered fabric was soft as a kitten and it stretched a little too. It was different from anything else they'd ever worn. "Maybe I'm just not Rajolaan anymore."

Nabooru licked her lips like she hadn't had water all day. "So who are you?"

"You tell me," said Rajo, tucking their wild curls back behind their ears. The feeling of weight on the top of their ears was just too weird.

"That's not how it works," she said.

"It is now," said Rajo.

Nabooru rolled her eyes. "Says you and what army?"

"I don't need any stupid army," said Rajo, setting their jaw. "The rule is stupid, so I changed it."

"What happened to you?"

"Nothing," said Rajo.

Nabooru frowned, but she unfolded herself from her chair and knelt next to them as the look-away bubble started to wobble and shrink. "Did you have a vision, Rajo? With the blue stone?"

"Maybe."

"What did you see? You can tell me," she said, placing a warm hand on their shoulders. Rajo missed that - she was gone all the time now, being important and brave with the other Saiev. "I'll keep it secret. Just us."

"Blood," Rajo murmured. "Every time the blue light changes, there is blood everywhere."

"And?"

"And," Rajo sighed, and looked away so they wouldn't have to see Nabs looking at their scar. "Sometimes the blood is mine but it's not mine, either. The spirit with weird blue eyes, he says riddles, and when I touched him, I saw both blood and lightning. He says the magic princess is dreaming a storm, and if it isn't stopped, bad things will happen."

"That's really awful - come here," she said, wrapping them in her arms like she used to do when they were little and the Rova were away. "Nasty dreams are terrible, and you get more than your share of them. It's awful, I know, but they can't hurt you as long as you remember they're just dreams."

The look-away bubble popped as Rajo pushed away from her. They would be strong. They weren't little anymore. "I know what I saw, and it was real. And it's going to be even realer if I don't stop it. People are going to die in the storms. Lots of people. Our people."

Nabooru rocked back on her heels and worried her lower lip between her teeth a moment. "I need to tell the Exalted about this. I won't tell her it was your dream, but-"

"You can't," cried Rajo. "You promised!"

"I know," she said, holding out her hands to them. "But like you said, this is important, and sometimes important things mean we have to do things we don't like. I'll take care of it - it's still our secret - no one has to know it was your dream or anything. You're just too young to be-"

"I'm not _just_ anything anymore," said Rajo, their anger boiling over. "I'm not a bad-luck nobody weakling. I have magic - and I have a Name!"

"Rajo-"

"You had your chance to claim the blue-eyed spirit. Now he's mine and _I'll_ solve all the puzzles. The lightning and the fairies and the ghosts and the wandering fire and the storm will answer to  _me_."

Nabooru licked her lips again, and spoke in a quiet voice. "What will you do with them when they do?"

"I will make the bad kings sorry," said Rajo.


	8. Chapter 8

Twilight fell early, heavy with storms gathered in the northern foothills like so many twisthorn sheep against an inconvenient fence. In the first week of it, the people cheered. In the second, they prayed. Now, they were silent, except for one. 

"Boogers," said Rajo as they tripped over lamplight sneaking across the windowsill.

Nabooru groaned as Rajo overbalanced the writing desk and everything on it. "For once in your life can you just use a door like a normal child?"

Rajo dusted off their knees, making sure they hadn't torn anything as they tumbled. "If you hadn't locked your stupid shutters you wouldn't even know I was here."

"Whatever," said Nabooru, stretching with an enormous yawn. "You're such a hopelessly noisy thief you'll be lucky to grow up a graverobber."

Rajo made a face at her in the orange lamplight, righting the desk. "You shouldn't even light the lamp when you're going to drink. You always forget to snuff it before you fall asleep."

"I wasn't asleep yet, cheesebrain. I wanted to talk to you - you’ve got to stop wearing mourning colors. People aren’t stupid - just because you put it with something else doesn’t mean they won’t still notice."

"Yeah? Well, I don't care," said Rajo, collecting the fallen books before the shattered inkwell could ruin them. "Where's the fifth one?"

"Don't be a turd. I couldn't find it. Either the Rova are using it, or the title's wrong. You said you needed some _ thing _ from their library, not half the archive."

"Balls," said Rajo, straightening the crinkled pages of the fourth volume. "Well, it doesn't matter. I have another list for you anyway."

"Fine. I hope you brought me enough replacements for both sets this time."

Rajo pulled the strap of their heavy satchel over their head and dropped it next to the desk by way of answer.

Nabooru sighed. "Alright, give me the list, and I'll start looking for them. Try to make these four last a few days, or the Exalted is going to start asking questions."

Rajo tucked the four new volumes into the otherwise mostly empty satchel under their mantle. "Fine. Get me the potions first then."

Nabooru snorted. “I’m not your servant, numbskull. Steal them yourself.”

“Don’t be stupid. The Rova doubled the watch on the medicine halls.”

“So get practicing,” said Nabooru, throwing back her blankets. “You’re not going to learn how to sneak past the Elite with your nose in musty old books every night.”

“Time is more important than lessons in anything,” said Rajo, crossing the room to hand her a folded scrap of paper. “I made a list of the ingredients in case you were too cucco hearted to get the finished potions. But then I’ll need them tomorrow.”

Nabs swore, snatching the paper from their fingers. They glared at Rajo without bothering to read the list. “What’s on your face?”

“Nothing. Actually, get the the stuff tomorrow either way. Put the lamp somewhere else, or put the jars in the window or something.”

“No,” said Nabs, catching their wrist. “That’s not a shadow - turn, let me see it.”

Rajo groaned, pulling against her strength to little use. “I was clumsy, ok? Let me go, I have stuff to do tonight.”

“It can wait. How  _ exactly _ were you clumsy today, Rajenaya? You have to tell me.”

Rajo scowled, letting her pull them closer and push back the wool of their dark mantle. They refused to look at her, even when she grabbed their chin and made them turn. “I don’t  _ have _ to do anything. Let me go or you’ll be sorry.”

“Don’t be like that,” said Nabs.

“I’ll be however I want,” said Rajo, jerking away as the red magic started to glitter at the edges of their vision. It wasn’t quite like the Rova’s spells, and it wasn’t at all like the wandering fire, or the shadows. It came easier when they were angry, but the Rova seemed to know when they’d used it. They called the shadows as they strode to the window, careful to avoid the pool of lamplight this time. “Just get the stuff.”

 

\- o - O - o -

 

Rajo checked the seal, and slipped the bottle into place next to the others in the pockets of the Link-spirit’s brown satchel. She’d brought all three potions, and an extra bottle with a single weird mushroom packed in oil. It looked like the one mentioned in the recipe, but without smelling it they couldn’t be sure.

“Don’t get caught with that,” said Nabs from the darkness. “And don’t eat it.”

Rajo groaned. She was supposed to be asleep. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Same to you, ox-brain.”

“I don’t need the book of maps anymore,” said Rajo “At least, not right now. I left the new list inside the one about the river people. The one about stone magic - get me that one first.”

“What are you up to? I heard you were sleeping in lessons again.”

Rajo shrugged, tying the satchel shut for the race against sunrise. “Another ilmaha died yesterday, and one of the weavers.”

“War isn’t the only reason people die,” said Nabs. “Were they your friends?”

Rajo shook their head. “I heard the healers talking. This fever - the red cough comes for babies. Nobody gets it twice.”

Nabs was quiet a moment as Rajo pulled their mantle tight and climbed into the window.

“You’ve always been healthy,” said Nabs.

Rajo stepped out into the cold shadows.

 

\- o - O - o -

 

“I won’t steal any more potions,” said Nabs a week later. She’d been waiting for them next to the half open window. She opened the shield on the lantern before they quite reached the floor.

Rajo fell, collecting a splinter in their palm. “I didn’t want any more anyway. They’re stupid.”

“Four more of your friends have died.”

“Not my fault,” said Rajo, pulling the splinter with their teeth.

Nabs closed the window and put her back against the shutters. “You’ve got bruises again.”

“It’s nothing,” said Rajo, digging out the last batch of books. “Are you on dawn watch?”

“I’ve had enough of these games, Rajenaya. It’s time to be serious - you need to tell me what’s going on.” Nabs set the lantern on the desk and crossed her arms, glaring down at them. “And if you don’t, I’m telling the Exalted. Tonight.”

“I think I found the grotto,” said Rajo.

Nabs frowned harder. “What grotto?”

“The one you saw in the spirit’s blue gem - I’ll explain when we get there. We have to be fast.”

“What does this have to do with the long fever?”

“Just trust me,” said Rajo, reaching for her hand.

She sighed and muttered blasphemies, but clasped their hand in her own.

Rajo stole the lanternfire and called the twilight through the cracks in the shutters. Shadows filled the room, and Nabs faded to a little green echo beside the window, dropping their hand. She kept looking around her like she couldn’t see them, and when Rajo reached for her, their hand passed right through hers.

“Turds,” said Rajo, throwing open the shutters in case that would help. It didn’t.

Rajo called to her, climbing into the window, but she didn’t seem to hear. Wherever she turned, her spirit gem cast a faint green-gold light. This hadn’t happened when they dragged the Link-spirit to the observatory cave, but Nabs was a person, not a spirit.

Rajo reached for her gem, hoping maybe they could make her hear that way, but as soon as their fingers brushed against it, it fell.

Nabs shrank into a little ball of witchfire as her gem bounced across the floorboards. Rajo scrambled after it, cradling it against their chest. That wasn’t supposed to happen at all.

The ball of Nabs-witchfire followed them though.

Rajo turned a circuit around the room, watching it follow faithfully three steps behind.

“Whatever,” said Rajo, winding the gem’s chain around their fingers so they wouldn’t drop it. They climbed back into the window, and eased along the terrace, glancing back to make sure the Nabs-witchfire was still following.

“Just keep up, okay?”

The witchfire said nothing.

Rajo ran.

  
  


\- o - O - o -

 

They didn’t make it to the grotto before twilight became full night. Rajo stayed on the shadow-roads anyway, though their lungs burned and their knees ached and twisted creatures roared from the verges of the road and leapt after them like hungry moldorm.

Rajo didn’t dare stop to fight. Every time one of the creatures got close enough to swipe at them, they dropped into a somersault and kept running. Nabs’ gem continued to shine, and the Nabs-witchfire followed, even when they crashed through the screen of silverleaf and thornroot at the mouth of the grotto.

“Mother of Sands,” Rajo prayed, unwinding the gem from their stiff fingers as the nightmare creatures snarled and tore at the branches. They thrust the gem into the witchfire and banished the shadows, saying Nabooru’s name over and over as the world wobbled and twisted.

“What? Stop saying my name, I’m right here.” Nabs snapped, slapping their hand away. “Fine, I’ll follow you, you didn’t have to blow the lantern out. I can’t see anything. Do I smell blood?”

Rajo blew a long breath through their nose and kicked sand at her. "Don't you remember?"

"Remember what?"

Rajo stalked away, deeper into the grotto. “Shut up. Just - shut up.”

Nabs swore at them.

Rajo called the wandering fire, shaping it into a little ball and lofting it into the air above their shoulder.

Nabs swore again, her eyes wide in the flickering gold light. “Where are we? What did you do?”

“Come on,” said Rajo, heading deeper into the damp grotto.

Nabs followed, trailing one hand against the smooth stone wall of the curving entrance. She stopped swearing when the grotto opened into the larger chamber, with the dripping pool on one side and the blackened fire circle in the middle, and the pile of rugs and crates and jars against the back wall.

“Is this it? Is this the place you saw?”

Nabs shook her head and blinked a few times, running her hand over her face. “Yeah,” she said at last. “This is it. How did you know?”

Rajo shrugged. “You think about it a lot. And you dream loud. Is this your secret place, like the observatory cave?”

Nabs frowned. “No. I’ve never been here before - I only saw it once-”

“In the blue light.” Rajo paced around the cold fire circle. “What did he say to you, before the stone flashed?”

Nabs shook her head.

“You have to tell me - it’s important,” said Rajo.

“What does this have to do with the fever? With all those books? The potions?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Rajo with a shrug. “But we can talk here. No one can hear us. Tell me everything you remember about the vision.”

“You think he brought the plague,” said Nabs, staring at a patch of dirt between her and the fire ring. Where she saw blood in her dreams, and a monster made of light.

“No,” said Rajo. “I think the bad magic did. Potions only make the red cough last longer - they don’t help at all. Even the strongest one.”

Nabooru frowned. “How did you find this place? And how did you bring me here? This isn’t something the Rova taught you-”

“The Rova don’t know everything,” said Rajo, stopping in the place she was staring so she’d have to meet their eyes. “You’re going to keep it secret, too.”

Nabooru tightened her jaw so hard the tendons in her neck stood out, and her knuckles went white with the fury she held in her fists. “It smelled like burning. More than a little fire like that. I couldn’t see the ceiling, and the fire was behind the spirit and the dead prince-”

“How did you know it was the prince?”

“I just knew, ok?” Nabs snapped. “The boy said he could prove himself, but when he pulled out the blue stones, that’s what I saw.”

“What did he say?”

Nabs shrugged. “Which one?”

“Both,” said Rajo, watching her face.

She looked away. “The vision-spirit spoke nonsense riddles, and said I shouldn’t have come. And then there was a roaring, and pain, and a wall of water, and I couldn’t breathe. So I hit him.”

Rajo paced around the cold fire circle again, thinking. “You remember the riddle.”

Nabs sighed. “ _ Bad things. Had to. Bad tomorrows. Fixed it.  _ Over and over until the roaring shut him up.”

“And before the blue light? You have to tell me. It’s important.”

“The boy said he knew things. Said he came to help find the sisters lost in the Sands. Said he came to save us from the monster in the Temple. Which is dumb, because we haven’t had a sage in generations, and no one even goes there anymore.”

Rajo frowned. Link only spoke of monsters in his stories of Hyrule. Everything else was always ‘bad magic’. “The Rova go there.”

“Yeah,” said Nabs, digging her toes against the sandy floor of the grotto. “They don’t count.”

“Why not?”

“They’re different. The Rova aren’t like other Geldo.”

“Neither am I,” said Rajo, standing tall. “If he can stop a light-monster too strong for the Rova tomorrow, he can stop the plague  _ now _ .”

“Rajo - spirits are dangerous,” Nabs began.

“Then I will be more dangerous,” said Rajo, opening the shadow-roads.


	9. Chapter 9

_Long ago tomorrow when the moon would fall, the hurting one stole a precious thing. With beauty they will make sadness, with joy they make crookedness, with truth they made sorrows._

_People will become angry where they had loved, and bad things filled every tomorrow, and every tomorrow after that, until the end of everything._

_The tomorrow magic was sung, and still the hurting one danced pain._

_The sun was sung dancing, and everything will be the same. The skin of the lost one becomes the stranger, and everyone forgets._

_In the long ago tomorrows of deathless dreaming, even the moon would fall at the end, and the end, and the end._

 

\- o - O - o -

 

  
The green sky opened with a great shattering roar, hurling darkness and cold upon everything that lived. The people hid, whispering to one another that the black wind could not come in winter. They told their children the storm would pass, and they sat together around fires as small as hope, singing the dawn.

The wind fell silent, and the people prayed.

One shadow among many raced through the swift-falling night, weaving a fragile path toward the light as the worlds of the living and the dead exchanged crowns. Red lightning sparked along the crags the people called Serpent’s Rest, and vanished between the Sister Stones. The rain spat once more, and stopped. A child stood on the Dragon’s Stairs holding a shard of light in their hands.

“Wait here,” said the child to the light. “I will take away his blue magic, first.”

The child and the light parted ways, taking more solid form with every step as the wind held her breath. The light stretched and faded, and a young woman with bright eyes and broad shoulders pressed her back against the cold stone of the Dragon Stairs. The darkness held her in silence, and whatever prayers rose to the golden gods that night remain forever secret.

“So it didn't work,” said the boy in the cave.

“I gave the bottle to Angnu,” said the child standing at the edge of the cave. “But she only drank half.”

“She fell asleep?”

“Yeah,” began the child.

“Maybe she will have good dreams,” said the boy. “You can't save everyone.”

“She stopped moving,” said the child, wrapping their fist around the blade half-hidden in their cloak. “You said the blue potion heals everything.”

The boy in the cave bent over his shining flute, brushing away imaginary dust. “Everything that _can_ be healed. But some things, once begun, can only be _stopped_.”

“So why didn't it stop?”

The boy smiled, but it was not a nice smile. “Everything has a price.”

The child frowned, pacing a tight circuit on the highest terrace of the Stairs. “How much do you want, spirit? A thousand rupees? Ten thousand? Temples? Feasts? Songs?”

“I'm not a spirit,” said the boy, tucking his flute into his dark tunic.

“Whatever,” said the child. “Why didn't the blue potion work?”

“I don't know,” said the boy. “Did you ask the fairy?”

The child stopped pacing, glaring into the shadows of the cave. “I went to the place you said, and I waited, but there was nothing, not even when I sang for her.”

The boy sighed, dropping his head into his hands. “Then I am too late.”

The child approached the threshold, but did not cross. “Why is the stupid fairy so important? The red cough is part of the bad magic - your enemy. You _know things_ \- where it comes from and where it's weakest - if you won't fix it, show _me_ and _I_ will do it.”

The boy pushed to his feet, stalking into the uncanny stillness with his wide blue eyes fixed on the child. They stared at each other a long time in the dark, while a young woman with steel in her fists asked her neglected gods for a sign.

“Take me to Angnu,” said the boy.

 

\- o - O - o -

 

“Wait here,” said the child to the light. “I will take away his blue magic, first.”

The child and the light parted ways, becoming more solid with every step. The light stretched and faded, and a young woman with bright eyes and broad shoulders pressed her back against the cold stone of the Dragon Stairs. The darkness held her in silence, and the wind dug her talons into the living rock, and waited.

“Why this one,” said the boy in the cave. “Why do you care about this _one_ when there are a hundred thousand million other people who will suffer?”

“Why not,” said the child, winding their fist around their curved short sword. “Why should I care more about someday strangers than people _right now_? The blue potion didn't change anything - you said-”

“I said, it heals _almost_ everything,” said the boy in the cave, his wide eyes reflecting the faint blue light in the depths of the cliffside cave. “Tell me why, _for this one_ , you will not accept fate. What makes Angnu special?”

“Fate is stupid,” said the child, but they retreated half a step under the press of those unwavering eyes. “Why does she have to be special before you will help? Why do you need a _reason_? You know things about the bad magic but you hide everything in stupid riddles, wasting time-”

“I can't help her,” said the boy, lingering at the cave mouth. “She’s dead, Rajo.”

“No,” said Rajo, drawing their shortblade. “Bring your stupid blue magic - Nabs will open the medicine hall for you-”

“It's too late,” said the boy, gesturing with bloody hands. “Can't you see the miasma? The whole fortress is mired already-”

“No,” said Rajo. “I see _you_. You say there is a bad magic, that you fix bad things. Fix _this_.”

“I can't,” said the boy. “Light will hold it back, a little, but there is no cure.”

“No,” howled Rajo, slashing at the darkness between them. The boy did not flinch, even when sparks of red lightning gathered and hissed. “ _You_  brought this - you find the bad magic everywhere because it's coming from _you_.”

The boy shook his head sadly. “Why can't you be good?”

“Good,” spat Rajo, advancing on the boy as lightning danced in their hair. “If your _good_ can’t help Angnu or anyone, _fine_. We don't need it. I don't need it. I don't need anyone. I will open the place of the golden gods’ dreaming and _I_ will fix it. Then you’ll be sorry.”

The boy screamed, long and horrible, and the young woman with steel in her fists raced up the Dragon’s Stairs too late to see the spiral made of many-colored light begin its inexorable arc. She did not cry, but raised her fragile blades against the bright nightmare ahead, and kept running.

 

\- o - O - o -

 

“Wait here,” said the child to the light. “I will take away his blue magic, first.”

The child and the light parted ways. A young woman with bright eyes and broad shoulders pressed her back against the cold stone as a child in sun’s heart purple climbed the Dragon Stairs. The darkness pressed down upon them, and the wind hid behind the veil of the storm.

A warrior spirit clothed in light emerged from the cave at the top of the stairs, and a trail of blood followed him. The child paused for only three heartbeats, and climbed on. They stood before the silent warrior spirit, and raised their chin with pride.

“I have seen you before,” said the child.

“ _ **And you have already chosen,**_ ” said the shining warrior, resting his terrible spiral sword on the stones at his feet.

“If you don’t take the plague away,” said the child, wrapping their small brown fist around the hilt of their curved shortblade. “I will go into the Sands and get a magic that _can._ ”

“ _ **And what will you do with such power?**_ ”

“Everything you won't,” said the child, baring their teeth. “I will find the source of the bad magic-”

“ _ **It's you,**_ ” said the light warrior with a sorrowing sigh. “ _ **It is always you, Ganondorf.**_”

The young woman with steel in her fists held her breath, and the storm began slowly to turn, sparking red lightning deep within its dark heart.

“It is a strong name,” said Ganondorf. “And I will be the strongest King.”


	10. Epilogue : T + 1

Ganondorf raced down through the narrow, treacherous streets of the degenerate capital, urging the stallion to find another burst of speed after every turn. The rain hammered against both of them, and the cobbles ran red with the blood of fallen soldiers. No doubt whatever the sheikah scorpion flew this way.

And so he followed, thinking only forward, only to what could be salvaged. She took the princess alive - so she was exactly as important as he suspected. He’d seen the storm reflected in Zelda’s wide blue eyes, when she thought he couldn’t see her. The voice in the blue stone wanted her, and so did Ganondorf.

Whatever secrets the insufferable Hylian overking took to his death no longer mattered. By law, his worldly power passed to the sheltered, pious, maiden princess even now in the scorpion’s pincers.

But.

More important the pathetic laws of little kings, more important than the guardians of the keystones, was the spell to wake them. She was the last chain binding the spirits in service to the hateful Hylians, and she alone among mortals knew the key to open the gates of the Sacred Realm, and the great weapon hidden within it. The weapon that could change the shape of the world. The greatest gift of the golden goddesses, which neither god nor demon could wield, and all of them justly feared.

The creaking clattering boom of the drawbridge falling made his heart stop. The scorpion pulled further ahead of him than she had any right to do, even accounting for all the blood and greed fueling her magic. He spurred the stallion on, but it was too late. The rain came all the harder as he pulled up short, growling back at the thunder. 

The road held nothing but splashing mud and one small child.

_ Long ago tomorrow, death will come to the deathless place. The guardian becomes sadness, but the King will not hear the forest. _

“You, over there. Little kid,” shouted Ganondorf. “You must have seen the white horse gallop past just now. Which way did it go? Answer me!”

The boy in the the colors of the forest stepped back, and a glitter of blue light flickered behind his shoulder, with a hint of bells. The rain poured over his face, but his wide eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from crying. Ganondorf looked at him, and remembered another child crying, long ago.

“So,” he said, smiling. “You think you can protect them from me.”

The boy in green raised his fragile chin, but said nothing.

“You've got guts,” said Ganondorf to the brave forest boy.

The boy drew a small, leaf-shaped blade with his left hand, wiping snot from his nose with the back of the other.

  
Ganondorf laughed.


End file.
